Main Lodge and Gates to Minley Manor

Main lodge, gate piers and walls to Minley Manor, 1885-88 by George Devey for BW Currie.

MATERIALS: red brick, predominantly in English bond, with diaper work, limestone dressings and a slate roof.

PLAN: the lodge and gates are positioned on an axis with the arched entrance at Arch Cottage (qv) and the gates north of the orangery.

The walls bound part of the Minley Manor estate on Minley Road. The lodge is built into the wall on the north side of the gate. It has a two-storey main range perpendicular to the road with single-storey accommodation to the north and south. A screen wall returns from the lodge to the stables to the west.

EXTERIOR: the boundary walls open to form an entrance marked by square-section piers with stone bases and caps, one of which retains a stone heraldic beast. The walls are enriched with diaper work and a brick dentil course beneath shaped stone copings. Walls are ramped between the outer and inner piers.

From the roadside the first floor gable end of the lodge rises above the wall, which forms its north-east elevation. There are mullioned windows in the wall with leaded glass, and in the first floor a two-light stone mullioned window in an aedicular architrave with pilasters and a semi-circular pediment surmounted by finials. The gable has a tall parapet with stone copings with heavy crockets and a ball finial at the apex.

From within the manor grounds the single-storey parts of the lodge are visible; these have the same detailing as the walls, with dentilled eaves and a coped parapet. Windows are one, two or three-light casements in chamfered stone mullioned architraves with projecting moulded cills. The west gable has a pedimented two-light window, as on the roadside elevation. A single-storey porch projects to the south; the front door is recessed behind an elliptical arched architrave of chamfered limestone. Rear doorways have gauged brick arches.

INTERIOR: not inspected.